Early in the season, when the Macomb football team made mistake on the field, the Bombers had enough talent to overcome and win a game.

Going against an equally talented Peoria Notre Dame squad on Saturday, Macomb could not make up for its own mistakes, seeing its season end at the hands of the Irish, 41-21.

"I think we came up short because we shot ourselves in the foot too many times," Macomb linemen Nick Severs said. "I don't think they're 20 points better than us, we just didn't execute and take advantage of the things they were giving us."

The teams were playing even after and 87-yard Jarrod Rockhold touchdown run tied the game at 14-14, 13 seconds into the second quarter.

After a Peoria Notre Dame punt, Macomb was also forced to punt.

But the snap to kicker Eli Cousins sailed over his head. By the time Cousins was able to get to the ball, he has tackled by the Irish defense, giving Peoria Notre Dame a short field.

The Irish would take advantage, taking the lead for good on an Aaron Sanders three-yard run.

Macomb struggled on special teams multiple times on Saturday, fumbling away a kickoff and having Cousins get tackled deep in Bomber territory attempting another punt.

"The big thing that really hurt us tonight was special teams, which have really come through for us all year long," Macomb coach Kelly Sears said. "It didn't happen (Saturday), we had some mistakes but overall the kids played hard, there was a lot of hitting going on out there.

"We knew the game was going to be won in the trenches, last weekend our center, Garrett Kline went down and he is our long snapper. We tried to throw a couple different wrinkles at them, it worked once, but the second time they got off the edge and we couldn't get a punt off. Those are things we look back on now that we would have done different, but we didn't."

Penalties and inconsistencies on the ground hurt the Bombers as well.

Backs Jarrod Rockhold and Eli Cousins both had over 100 yards, but the majority of the yardage came on big runs.

Macomb also hurt itself with several holding penalties.

"We talked about that at halftime, we could not get a consistent push and that goes back to Weeks 3 and 4," Sears said. "We had the same problem then, but we were able to get out of it, teams weren't as capable as PND.

"We met our match (Saturday) and my hat's off to them."

Macomb fell behind by 13 points, 27-14, but a Cousins touchdown run cut it to 27-21 just before the end of the third quarter.

Page 2 of 2 - Unfortunately for the Bombers, they could not get defensive stops to get the ball back while it was still a one-score game.

"We did not tackle well tonight, but a lot of that again goes to them (Peoria Notre Dame)," Sears said. "I thought we moved the ball pretty well, but the big thing is they had some big plays, they ran that little G-Sweep and it really hurt us a lot, we had a hard time stopping it."